By Richard Harvey
At this very moment, Time must be seized, and in a less tentative, much more lusty way than the solid advice of Carpe Diem. Day after day, the grounds shifts and we must do what humans have proven themselves capable of doing over millennia: adapt to survive. But we are creatures that need nourishment of the mind and spirit as well.
So seize the moment to work from home if you can, walk down the now quiet streets, safely wandering into the previously forbidden lanes of the automobile. Listen to sounds that come out of a quieted city; you may not have ever heard them before.
- Prints of geese on ice -
Fort Calgary, March 2020
This moment is one where you can bask in the relative silence of limited aircraft (I live under the approach to YYC runway 34), taking note of the crowds of people surging forth onto the streets on a pale ghost of a Spring day saluting strangers across a more than responsible distance with a wave. This is not a greeting that is intimate, but one of social interaction to provide a balm for the isolation that troubles many people. Your distancing can be the greatest possible act of generous humanity - an “I’ll see you on the other side of this” which also says “ I wish you no harm”.
Watch the river ice slowly disappear, watch the hares turn from snowshoe white to brown straw, study the tree branches for nascent buds, listen to the house finch whose song might be a reason that the word “mellifluous” exists. Metrovino is in the Beltline, yet nature is all around us - you don’t need a backyard or an estate.
- Jump: Overall Winner of 2019 Nature Photographer Of The Year. -
Look up this site: theurbanbirder.com. David Lindo says: “The sky is a great arena…My message is simple: keep looking up”.
Grasp this time not simply for recreation, but meditation. Not only in the one sense of “mindfulness”, but to think profoundly and creatively about the future. Big and difficult questions loom: “what do I essentially need?“ are “what is truly precious to me?” are now more pertinent questions than “what do I want?”.
This is a moment to awaken to the realization that we’re all in the same leaking boat, and there’s folk in the steerage class who are getting hurt first, and hardest. If awareness of climate change did not grab our attention in this way, a pandemic that threatens us immediately and very personally should. Action must be taken to stop the eventual loss of these people who live closer to many threats than the rest of us, or indeed threaten the entire ship we’re all travelling on. Alarmist? No, it’s rather a desire to follow the science of epidemiology that shows we’ll all have to “duck & cover”, not from a nuclear attack, but from something insidious and invisible for which we can unwittingly serve as the vector.
Here’s the French author Jean Giono, giving us “The Destruction of Paris”. I find it an oddly attractive and beautiful contemplation of a potential post-apocalypse to leave you with, one where Nature teaches the lesson of change:
“Follow me. There will be happiness for you, Man, only the day you are in the sun standing next to me. Come, come all of you, tell of the good news around you. There will be happiness for you only on the day when tall trees will break through the pavement, when the weight of the vines will make the obelisk crumble and cause the Eiffel Tower to bend; where in front of the gates of the Louvre we will hear only the slight sound of ripe pods opening and wild seeds falling; the day when, from the caverns of the Metro, dazzled wild boars with trembling tails will come roaring out”
